The high degree of variability in temporary threshold shift (TTS) and permanent hearing loss among individuals exposed to the same noise suggests that some people are more "at risk" to noise damage than others. The ability to identify noise susceptible individuals would significantly improve hearing conservation programs and save millions of dollars in compensation and uncalculable dollars in human suffering. There are many factors that relate to susceptibility to noise damage and a test battery approach would appear to be necessary. We are suggesting that the acoustic stapedius reflex (ASR) may prove to be one component of that test battery because of its confirmed role in TTS studies. Short-term noise exposure studies (minutes) indicate that the ASR and TTS in certain acoustic conditions are related. The ASR attenuates low-frequency sound transmission which reduces the total power of the signal reaching the cochlea and consequently reduces the development of TTS in low-frequency, as well as high-frequency regions. Because of the relation between ASR and TTS for short-term exposures, it would seem important to identify if similar relations exist for longer exposure periods (hours). If the TTS that develops following 2-hour noise exposures is related to certain properties of the ASR, e.g. threshold, magnitude, decay and/or latency, then measurements of its action may prove to be an initial attempt at complying a "noise susceptible" test battery. We propose three studies with the is purpose in mind: 1) to identify if correlations exist between ASR and TTS in human subjects exposed for two hours to broad-band noise; 2) to investigate relations between the TTS that develops following 2-hour exposures to octave-band (0.5 and 3.0 kHz) and broad-band noises in two groups of subjects with distinctly different ASR magnitudes; 3) to investigate relations between the TTS that develops following 2-hour exposures to octave-band (0.5 and 3.0 kHz) and broad-band noises in two groups of subjects with distinctly different amounts of reflex decay.